the big corporations, in the industrial world, in the interest of
our industrial democracy of to-day. This law must be efficient, and
therefore it must be administered by executive officers, and not by
lawsuits in the courts. If this is not done, the agitation to increase
out of all measure the share of the Government in this work will
receive an enormous impetus. The movement for Government control of the
great business corporations is no more a movement against liberty than
a movement to put a stop to violence is a movement against liberty.
On the contrary, in each case alike it is a movement for liberty; in
the one case a movement on behalf of the hard-working man of small
means, just as in the other case it is a movement on behalf of the
peaceable citizen who does not wish a “liberty” which puts him at the
mercy of any rowdy who is stronger than he is. The huge irresponsible
corporation which demands liberty from the supervision of Government
agents stands on the same ground as the less dangerous criminal of the
streets who wishes liberty from police interference.
But there is an even more important lesson for us Americans to
learn, and this also is touched upon in what I have quoted above.
It is not true, as Mr. Steevens says, that Americans feel that the
one end of life is to get dollars; but the statement contains a very
unpleasant element of truth. The hard materialism of greed is just as
objectionable as the hard materialism of brutality, and the greed of
the “haves” is just as objectionable as the greed of the “have-nots;”
and no more so. The envious and sinister creature who declaims against
a great corporation because he really desires himself to enjoy what
in hard, selfish, brutal fashion the head of that great corporation
enjoys, offers a spectacle which is both sad and repellent. The brutal
arrogance and grasping greed of the one man are in reality the same
thing as the bitter envy and hatred and grasping greed of the other.
That kind of “have” and that kind of “have-not” stand on the same
eminence of infamy. It is as important for the one as for the other
to learn the lesson of the true relations of life. Of course, the
first duty of any man is to pay his own way, to be able to earn his
own livelihood, to support himself and his wife and his children
and those dependent upon him. He must be able to give those for whom
it is his duty to care, food and clothing, shelter, medicine, an
education, a legitimate chance for reasonable and healthy amusements,
and the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and power which will fit
them in their turn to do good work in the world. When once a man has
reached this point, which of course will vary greatly under different
conditions, then he has reached the point where other things become
immensely more important than adding to his wealth. It is emphatically
right, indeed I am tempted to say it is emphatically the first duty of
each American, “to get dollars,” as Mr. Steevens contemptuously phrased
it; for this is only another way of saying that it is his first duty
to earn his own living. But it is not his only duty, by a great deal;
and after the living has been earned, getting dollars should come far
behind many other duties.
Yet another thing. No movement ever has done or ever will do good in
this country where assault is made not upon evil wherever found, but
simply upon evil as it happens to be found in a particular class.
The big newspaper, owned or controlled in Wall Street, which is
everlastingly preaching about the iniquity of laboring men, which is
quite willing to hound politicians for their misdeeds, but which with
raving fury defends all the malefactors of great wealth, stands on an
exact level with, and neither above nor below, that other newspaper
whose whole attack is upon men of wealth, which declines to condemn,
or else condemns in apologetic, perfunctory, and wholly inefficient
manner, outrages committed by labor. This is the kind of paper which
by torrents of foul abuse seeks to stir up a bitter class hatred
against every man of means simply because he is a man of means, against
every man of wealth, whether he is an honest man who by industry and
ability has honorably won his wealth, and who honorably spends it, or
a man whose wealth represents robbery and whose life represents either
profligacy, or at best an inane, useless, and tasteless extravagance.
This country cannot afford to let its conscience grow warped and
twisted, as it must grow if it takes either one of these two positions.
We must draw the line not on wealth nor on poverty, but on conduct. We
must stand for the good citizen because he is a good citizen, whether
he be rich or whether he be poor, and we must mercilessly attack the
man who does evil, wholly without regard to whether the evil is done
in high or low places, whether it takes the form of homicidal violence
among members of a federation of miners, or of unscrupulous craft and
greed in the head of some great Wall Street corporation.
Give Me Neither Poverty Nor Riches
In one of Lowell’s biting satires he holds up to special scorn the
smug, conscienceless creature who refuses to consider the morality
of any question of social ethics by remarking that “they didn’t know
everything down in Judee.” It is to be wished that some of those
who preach and practice a gospel of mere materialism and greed, and
who speak as if the heaping up of wealth by the community or by the
individual were in itself the be-all and end-all of life, would learn
from the most widely read and oldest of books that true wisdom which
teaches that it is well to have neither great poverty nor great riches.
Worst of all is it to have great poverty and great riches side by side
in constant contrast. Nevertheless, even this contrast can be accepted
if men are convinced that the riches are accumulated as the result of
great service rendered to the people as a whole, and if their use is
regulated in the interest of the whole community.
The movement which has become so strong during the past few years
to secure on behalf of the Nation both an adequate supervision of
and an effective taxation of vast fortunes, so far as their business
use is concerned, is a healthy movement. It aims to replace sullen
discontent, restless pessimism, and evil preparation for revolution,
by an aggressive, healthy determination to get to the bottom of our
troubles and remedy them. To halt in the movement, as those blinded men
wish who care only for the immediate relief from all obstacles which
would thwart their getting what is not theirs, would work wide-reaching
damage. Such a halt would turn away the energies of the energetic and
forceful men who desire to reform matters, from a legitimate object,
into the channel of bitter and destructive agitation. The reader of
Prince Kropotkin’s Memoirs must be struck by the damage wrought to
Russia by the unwise opponents of all reform, who, by opposing every
sensible movement for betterment, turned the energies of the young men
who under happier conditions would have worked for rational betterment
into the channels of a useless and destructive revolutionary movement.
The multimillionaire is not _per se_ a healthy development in this
country. If his fortune rests on a basis of wrong-doing, he is a far
more dangerous criminal than any of the ordinary types of criminals
can possibly be. If his fortune is the result of great service
rendered, well and good; he deserves respect and reward for such
service――although we must remember to pay our homage to the service
itself, and not to the fortune which is the mere reward of the service;
but when his fortune is passed on to some one else, who has not
rendered the service, then the Nation should impose a heavily graded
progressive inheritance tax, a singularly wise and unobjectionable kind
of tax. It would be a particularly good thing if the tax bore heaviest
on absentees.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.